The Bangladeshi government is pushing through measures that would give
the World Bank and IMF immunity in its operations within the country.
These measures show graphically the real relationship between the
underdeveloped countries and their imperialist masters.

A parliamentary watchdog [of the Bangladeshi parliament] has cleared
a controversial bill seeking blanket immunity for international lending
agencies operating in Bangladesh – the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. The International Financial Organisations Order
(Amendment) Act 2004, piloted by the finance and planning minister, M
Saifur Rahman, protects these institutions from any legal challenges
against their operations in Bangladesh.

The bill states the following: “The Bank shall enjoy immunity from
every form of legal process...” It also says “no action shall be
brought against the Bank, by any agency, or by any entity or person,
and there shall be recourse to such special procedures for the
settlement of controversies between the Bank and the government or the
agency or entity or person as the case may be.” And it goes on,
“Property and assets of the Bank shall, whosesoever located and by
whomsoever held, be immune from all forms of seizure, attachment or
execution, before the delivery of final judgement against the Bank.”

Such coverage includes immunity from actions brought by members or
persons. Its assets and property are also immune from all forms of
seizure, attachment or execution before the delivery of final judgement
against the Bank. No legal action is allowed against the activities of
any employee if he or she does so at the directive of the Bank. No
immigration-related rules are to be applicable against the foreign
staff of the Bank in Bangladesh. In an explanatory clause, the bill
included the International Development Association, International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development and International Monetary Fund in
the immunity measures.

Why is the government of Bangladesh so eager to pass this bill
through parliament? The issue of immunity originated after one of its
employees, Ms Ismet Khan, of the Bank filed a case against it in the
local court of Bangladesh in 2001 for arbitrary and unfair dismissal as
External Affairs Officer of the World Bank’s Dhaka office. The Bank
also violated a previous court injunction and appointed Ms Khan’s
predecessor to her position, with complete disregard for the laws of
the land.

Paradoxically, while the Bank is preaching so-called “broad based
reforms” to its member countries, it turns a blind eye to irregular
practices within the Bank itself. Ms Khan was compelled to file her
case in the courts of Bangladesh in 2001. At first, the World Bank
ignored summons and fourteen dates to appear in court. Then it engaged
lawyers to claim that it was “immune” from the legal process and
implored the authorities to reject her case. Eventually, it forced the
government to intervene in the case and defend the Bank’s interests in
the court – a highly “illegitimate” and even illegal request from many
points of view.

So much for transparency! The World Bank does not want to be held
accountable to anyone, although it demands accountability from its
client countries. Granting immunity to the World Bank and the IMF means
giving it free rein to do whatever it wants in Bangladesh. It will put
the local government completely at the mercy of these bodies. To a
degree they already are in this position, but this bill actually
legalises this relationship.

The new bill confirms the utter helplessness of the so-called “Third
World” countries. Any World Bank or IMF official will be free to do as
he or she wishes and will remain free from prosecution. Any Bengali
employee unjustly treated or dismissed by any of these organisations
will simply have to accept his or here fate.

World Bank and Bangladesh

The World Bank’s motto is “Our dream is a world without poverty.” It
employs over 10,000 people in more than 100 offices throughout the
world with an annual budget of $1.5 billion. However, contrary to its
motto, according to the Index of Economic Freedom, the Bank’s money has
done nothing to improve the living conditions of the countries it
“donates” money to. These same countries are just as poor as they were
40 years ago when they started receiving loans from the World Bank.

The record of the IMF and World Bank is not good in this regard. Far
from being the solution to the uneven development and poverty in these
countries, they actually contribute to a great degree to the continued
impoverishment of the same countries. Their lending practice actually
enhances further poverty. The vast majority of countries who have
received loans from them have been unable to develop fully after
depending on these institutions for over 40 years.

Bangladesh is in fact the World Bank’s third highest recipient of
funds. This actually goes against the World Bank’s own lending
criteria. Bangladesh is now the world’s most corrupt country according
to Transparency International (TI), a position it competes for with
other countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria. In fact corruption is so
high in Bangladesh that it caused a loss of economic activity
equivalent to 4.7 percent of GDP in 2001 alone. The World Bank’s
International Development Agency has lent Bangladesh $9.914 billion
dollars since 1973. In spite of all this money – or better, partly
thanks to it – Bangladesh is the world’s third poorest country. So much
for “a world without poverty.”

Up to 1.28 billion people around the world are living below the
poverty line. This is the figure the World Bank provides in its World
Development Report, 2000. Almost 72 percent of these poor people live
in Asia and about half of the one billion Asian poor live in South Asia
alone! And Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries within this poor
continent. One man in two is considered poor in Bangladesh, according
to World Bank definitions, i.e. living on less than $1 a day. This is
quite an arbitrary figure. What happens if you are living on more than
$1 a day but less than $2? In spite of its shortcomings, however, it
does allow for some form of comparison between the levels of poverty in
each country.

In Bangladesh this 50% of the population officially classified as
poor are the most downtrodden sections of society. They have no real
income, no wealth, no access to education, social security and, most
importantly, they have no access to political power. They are at the
bottom of the ladder, in an intrinsically unequal society.

In Bangladesh there is an ongoing process of unequal and unjust
distribution of wealth. In this process we see a growing pauperisation
of the population. Even those layers classed as non-poor are slowly
sinking into greater poverty. Sections of the middle class are slowly
sinking into the “lower middle class” and then eventually they join the
ranks of the poor. There is in fact a new term for it: “Poor Becoming
Extreme Poor!”

So how does one go about solving the question of “poor becoming
extreme poor”? Well the bourgeoisie political thinkers are prone to
believe that the natural law of “Struggle for Existence and Survival of
the Fittest” holds good in society. Therefore what one can mostly do is
to devise a few “Safety Net” measures for at least protecting the
rights of the poor to live. The true meaning of these “Safety Net”
Measures”, however, is to maintain the reserve of cheap labour for the
more powerful employers of labour in society. That is why they have set
the minimum subsistence income, or the so-called poverty line, as the
norm for the millions of poor people of the globe.

At present it would seem that the World Bank is very anxious about
poverty in Bangladesh. Now donors no longer give grants or untied aid.
Most of the loans from the World Bank are either for a particular
project or based on one or another certain strategic policy such as
SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programmes). But the SAPs have miserably
failed not only in Bangladesh but also in many countries of Asia and
Africa. The main planks of these SAPs are:

1. Wholesale privatisation of industries and major utilities, such as water, electricity, gas, railways, ports, etc.

2. The blanket application of the so-called “free market policy”,
which practically means a unilateral cancelling of all tariff and
non-tariff restrictions by the country receiving the loans.

3. Withdrawal of all kinds of subsidies in the name of “Efficiency”.

4. Drastic cuts in government spending in order to ensure so-called “macro stability” of the economy.

A SAP was introduced in Bangladesh in the mid eighties when the
country was under a Martial Law Regime led by General Ershad. Later in
1990, five years after the introduction of this SAP General Ershad was
forced out of power by a mass upsurge of the working people, the
backbone of which was the united movement of blue and white collar
workers, students and agricultural labourers. In spite of that
movement, the SAP is still in place. At present it is going through its
last phase whereby all the remaining industries in the state sector,
whether profitable or not, are to be privatised.

There is also very big pressure on the government to break up the
BPC (Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation). The purpose of this is to put
the oil and gas industry in the country at the mercy of the big
multinational corporations. Similarly the United States are applying
big pressure to get the Chittagong Port handed over to a US based
company.

The incredible thing is the result of a recent official process of
evaluation of the SAP. All the so-called “stakeholders”, including the
World Bank itself, took part and the conclusion was negative! Theses
“stakeholders” even demanded that the World Bank should pay
compensation for imposing harmful policies that have provoked a slump
in the economy, increased poverty and unemployment and caused mass
discontent in the agricultural sector through the withdrawal of
subsidies.

Some of the statements issued by this “stakeholders'” investigation
are quite humorous. They recognised that nobody actually “owns” the
SAP! The Minister confessed that they had been pressurised into
accepting the SAP, otherwise loans or grants, whatever little that was
coming, would have been stopped.

Given the real concrete results of these policies, the World Bank
has had to recognise the failure of the SAP, at least partially anyway.
But they tried to put the blame solely on the Bangladeshi government.
According to them the government has not been sufficiently “committed”.
This of course is not true. What is true is that the World Bank can
pontificate from on high, but the government has the unfortunate
position of actually having to sell these policies to the Bangladeshi
masses!

Even the World Bank, however, has some insight on the effects its
own policies are having on the poor masses. They therefore recognised
the need for some safety measures to offset the so-called pains of the
“reform process”. But this comes in the form of a so-called “Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper” (PRSP).

The World Bank is now insisting that Bangladesh and many other
“highly indebted countries” will have to prepare a PRSP within a
certain time limit and then submit it to them for a preliminary
evaluation. Then they will in turn forward it to the September meeting
of the member states of the board of directors of the World Bank for
their final approval. Until then all so-called “soft loan options” will
be withheld.

Ever since the birth of Bangladesh back in 1971, in spite of
so-called “aid” from the World Bank and other international financial
institutions, none of the basic problems of society have been solved.
On the contrary things have deteriorated and continue to do so.

Crime levels have rocketed. The vulnerability of the poor and the
weaker layers of society has increased enormously. The phenomenon of
“Mastanocracy” (political gangsterism) has increased enormously. In
fact the establishment’s political parties have become more and more
alien to the masses with their activists behaving like gangsters. The
local government bodies, and especially the police, have become totally
unaccountable.

Healthcare has deteriorated, as has education. Good clean water and
electricity supplies are scarce. The roads are in a state of terrible
disrepair. Agriculture is lagging way behind in terms of investment and
productivity.

Social inequality has massively increased, with the gap between the
rich and poor getting bigger instead of smaller. Regional inequality is
increasing, as is the gap between the rural and urban areas.

The social and political life of the country is becoming extremely
polarised and conflictual. The poor have no real voice. The present
political set up does not represent them. In fact a volcano is building
up from below and will sooner or later erupt.

The only way out

The only answer to the above problems is to start with a
revolutionary redistribution of wealth and power from which will follow
an egalitarian growth or pro-poor growth within the society. The
extreme neo-liberal policies of the World Bank are a product of
capitalism in a period of global economic decay.

Therefore, any effective fight against the World Bank must be linked
to building a powerful movement against capitalism itself, and to
replace it with an alternative system. We believe the only viable
alternative is socialism. How else can we control the multinationals’
pollution of the globe? How else can we ensure that the peoples of the
world have enough to eat? How else can we end the domination of the
poorest countries of the world by the multinational companies that have
distorted and destroyed their local economies in search of global
markets and cheap raw materials? How else can democracy be defended and
expanded in the face of the huge media machinery which now straddles
the globe?

All this can only be achieved through a genuine coming together of
the working people of the globe based on mutually supporting economies
controlled by the workers themselves. In other words, we need to fight
for global socialism. The task may be big, but the time is right.